The following relates generally to patient monitoring, and more specifically to closed loop alarm management.
In a healthcare facility such as a hospital, physiological parameters of a patient (e.g., heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure) may be monitored by one or more medical devices. For various reasons, such medical devices may sound a false alarm (e.g., inaccurate sensor placement, contributory factors unknown to the medical device, or default alarm thresholds that are inappropriate for a particular patient). A single patient may be monitored by several medical devices, and each device may trigger dozens of false alarms each day. The volume of false alarms from several patients on a daily basis may lead to alarm fatigue and may result in clinicians spending less time caring for their patients. Alarm fatigue may also contribute to reduced response time or ignoring alarms, which may adversely impact the quality of patient care. In the case of a false alarm, a clinician may respond to the alarm, determine that the alarm was indeed false, and may manually deactivate the alarm. However, if the parameters of the alarm remain the same, a similar false alarm will likely reoccur, causing the clinician to repeat this process.